F: San Pedro de Atacama II

When we arrived there, straight from the desert, from a hostel without a shower, and saw the Chilean standard, we could hardly believe it. A hairdryer in the hostel! A duvet! Salad in the restaurant! Public places are covered or shaded. Streets paved and (almost) without potholes. Now we have been in Chile for 3 weeks and we are still amazed.

San Pedro is located in the middle of the Atacama Desert. The surroundings are very similar to those in southern Bolivia, especially in terms of dryness, sand and dust, salt flats and lakes with flamingos. Only the heat was completely new, we had almost forgotten what shorts are. As it cools down so well at night, and it is a very dry heat, I didn't mind at all.

We took part in a star observation tour with an English astrologer who built his private observatory here in the Atacama Desert. It was sensational! First of all, the night sky itself, and then through the telescope, it's overwhelming. And secondly, this guy knew so much and every sentence he said was interesting, I could have listened for hours.

Sandboarding is exactly what several people have told me, but I had to find out for myself: well. It's fun to stand on a board again and slide down a slope, especially in the heat and in shorts. But the experience is miles away from snowboarding.

However, the Valle de La Luna was incredibly impressive. It really is like a lunar landscape. Everything is reddish, the eroded hills and individual blocks of hardened sand, in between are wind-sculpted rocks and fine sandy dunes. – see photos :-)